Despite having significant growth opportunity San Fran is already twice as dense as Seattle. Therefore Seattle has room for explosive housing growth. It would need more changes than just housing of course. But that's to be expected and totally doable.
Cities are huge economic multipliers. We don't need more cities yet. The ones we have are perfectly great! We need to more efficiently use what we already have.
This housing crisis isn't affecting just "top tier" cities. It's not just New York and San Fran. It's Seattle. It's Denver, Austin, and Portland. It's even Nashville!
Every city, top to bottom, needs to be doing more. And they need to start now as the longer they wait the more expensive the infrastructure adjustments become.
So long as you also build all the transportation, schooling, utility, and other infrastructure needed to support it.
Additional housing will result in a larger tax base which will automatically cover additional schooling needs.
I am hopeful for autonomous app hailed buses, but there's definitely a big chance it doesn't all work out that way, and even then there is clearly still a physical limit on how much existing road infrastructure can handle.
Wat? That is literally the opposite of reality.
The problem is cities are TOO POPULAR. Cities so successful that only the rich can afford to live in them! Increased property values, more property tax revenue, higher resident earnings and spendings. Cities aren't being decimated. Cities are so economically successful that poor people are being forced out so more rich people can move in!
The article, titled "The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore" is about people earning $50,000 to $125,000 who can't afford housing in cities. It's not about rural or rust belt communities with no jobs. Housing is plenty cheap in those areas. They just lack the jobs to go with it. A very real but very different problem.